Ke Xue Ph.D. Student LAMDA Group School of Artificial Intelligence National Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology Nanjing University email: xuek at lamda.nju.edu.cn

Currently I am a Ph.D. student of School of Artificial Intelligence in Nanjing University advised by Prof. Chao Qian and a member of LAMDA Group, led by Prof. Zhi-Hua Zhou.

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Biography

Sep 2019 - Now : Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science, School of Artificial Intelligence, Nanjing University.

Sep 2015 - Jun 2019 : B.Sc. in Mathematics and Applied Mathematics, School of Mathematics, Sun Yat-Sen University;

Sep 2012 - Jun 2015 : Jiyuan No.1 Middle School of Henan;

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Research Interest

I am interested in black-box optimization algorithms, such as:

Evolutionary algorithms [c2], especially Quality-Diversity algorithms [c3, c7, i1, c11, c13, c14];

Bayesian optimization [c1, c4, c10];

Learning to optimize [c5, i2, c12, c15, c16];

and their applications, such as:

Human-AI coordination [c6, c8, j1, j3, j4];

Electronic design automation [c9, i3, c17];

AI for science [j2];

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Journal Article

^# Equal Contribution

[j4] Cong Guan, Feng Chen, Ke Xue, Chunpeng Fan, Lichao Zhang, Ziqian Zhang, Pengyao Zhao, Zongzhang Zhang, Chao Qian, Lei Yuan, Yang Yu. One by One, Continual Coordinating with Humans via Hyper-Teammate Identification. Transactions on Machine Learning Research, in press.

[j3] Ke Xue, Yutong Wang, Cong Guan, Lei Yuan, Chao Qian, and Yang Yu. Heterogeneous Multi-Agent Zero-Shot Coordination by Coevolution. IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, in press. [Preprint]

[j2] Han Hu^#, Chao Qian^#, Ke Xue^#, Rainer Georg Jörgensen, Marco Keiluweit, Chao Liang, Xuefeng Zhu, Ji Chen, Yishen Sun, Haowei Ni, Jixian Ding, Weigen Huang, Jingdong Mao, Rong-Xi Tan, Jizhong Zhou, Thomas W. Crowther, Zhi-Hua Zhou, Jiabao Zhang, and Yuting Liang. Reducing the Uncertainty in Estimating Soil Microbial Derived Carbon Storage. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2024, 121(35): e2401916121. [PDF]

[j1] Cong Guan, Ke Xue, Chunpeng Fan, Feng Chen, Lei Yuan, Chao Qian, and Yang Yu. Open and Real-World Human-AI Coordination by Heterogeneous Training with Communication. Frontiers of Computer Science, 2025, 19(4): 194314. [PDF]

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Conference Paper

[c17] Ke Xue, Ruo-Tong Chen, Xi Lin, Yunqi Shi, Shixiong Kai, Siyuan Xu, and Chao Qian. Reinforcement Learning Policy as Macro Regulator Rather than Macro Placer. In: Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 37 (NeurIPS'24), Vancouver, Canada, 2024, to appear.

[c16] Shukuan Wang^#, Ke Xue^#, Lei Song, Xiaobin Huang, and Chao Qian. Monte Carlo Tree Search based Space Transfer for Black Box Optimization. In: Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 37 (NeurIPS'24), Vancouver, Canada, 2024, to appear. (Spotlight)

[c15] Ke Xue^#, Rong-Xi Tan^#, Xiaobin Huang, and Chao Qian. Offline Multi-Objective Optimization. In: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML'24), Vienna, Austria, 2024, pp.55595-55624. [PDF] [Code]

[c14] Ren-Jian Wang, Ke Xue, Cong Guan, and Chao Qian. Quality-Diversity with Limited Resources. In: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML'24), Vienna, Austria, 2024, pp.51984-52001. [PDF] [Code]

[c13] Chao Qian, Ke Xue, and Ren-Jian Wang. Quality-Diversity Algorithms Can Provably Be Helpful for Optimization. In: Proceedings of the 33rd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI'24), Jeju Island, Korea, 2024, pp.6994-7002. [PDF]

[c12] Chengrui Gao, Haopu Shang, Ke Xue, Dong Li, and Chao Qian. Towards Generalizable Neural Solvers for Vehicle Routing Problems via Ensemble with Transferrable Local Policy. In: Proceedings of the 33rd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI'24), Jeju Island, Korea, 2024, pp.6914-6922. [PDF] [Code]

[c11] Ke Xue^#, Ren-Jian Wang^#, Pengyi Li, Dong Li, Jianye Hao, and Chao Qian. Sample-Efficient Quality-Diversity by Cooperative Coevolution. In: Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR'24), Vienna, Austria, 2024. (Spotlight) [PDF] [Code]

[c10] Xiaobin Huang, Lei Song, Ke Xue, and Chao Qian. Stochastic Bayesian Optimization with Unknown Continuous Context Distribution via Kernel Density Estimation. In: Proceedings of the 38th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI'24), Vancouver, Canada, 2024, pp.12635-12643. [PDF] [Code]

[c9] Yunqi Shi, Ke Xue, Lei Song, and Chao Qian. Macro Placement by Wire-Mask-Guided Black-Box Optimization. In: Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 36 (NeurIPS'23), New Orleans, LA, 2023.

[PDF] [Code]

[c8] Ziqian Zhang, Lei Yuan, Lihe Li, Ke Xue, Chengxing Jia, Cong Guan, Chao Qian, and Yang Yu. Fast teammate adaptation in the presence of sudden policy change. In: Proceedings of the 39th Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI'23), Pittsburgh, PA, 2023, pp.2465-2476. [PDF]

[c7] Ren-Jian Wang, Ke Xue, Haopu Shang, Chao Qian, Haobo Fu, and Qiang Fu. Multi-objective Optimization-based Selection for Quality-Diversity by Non-surrounded-dominated Sorting. In: Proceedings of the 32nd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI'23), Macao, SAR, China, 2023, pp.4335-4343. [PDF] [Code]

[c6] Lei Yuan, Zi-Qian Zhang, Ke Xue, Hao Yin, Feng Chen, Cong Guan, Li-He Li, Chao Qian, and Yang Yu. Robust multi-agent coordination via evolutionary generation of auxiliary adversarial attackers. In: Proceedings of the 37th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI'23), Washington, DC, 2023, pp.11753-11762. (Oral) [PDF] [Code]

[c5] Ke Xue^#, Jiacheng Xu^#, Lei Yuan, Miqing Li, Chao Qian, Zongzhang Zhang, and Yang Yu. Multi-agent Dynamic Algorithm Configuration. In: Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 35 (NeurIPS'22), New Orleans, LA, 2022. (Spotlight) [PDF] [Code]

[c4] Lei Song^#, Ke Xue^#, Xiaobin Huang, and Chao Qian. Monte Carlo Tree Search based Variable Selection for High Dimensional Bayesian Optimization. In: Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 35 (NeurIPS'22), New Orleans, LA, 2022. (Spotlight) [PDF] [Code]

[c3] Yutong Wang^#, Ke Xue^#, and Chao Qian. Evolutionary Diversity Optimization with Clustering-based Selection for Reinforcement Learning. In: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR'22), Virtual, 2022. [PDF] [Code]

[c2] Ke Xue, Chao Qian, Ling Xu, and Xu-Dong Fei. Evolutionary Gradient Descent for Non-convex Optimization. In: Proceedings of the 30th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI'21), Virtual, 2021, pp.3221-3227. [PDF] [Code]

[c1] Chao Qian, Hang Xiong, and Ke Xue. Bayesian Optimization using Pseudo-Points. In: Proceedings of the 29th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI'20), Yokohama, Japan, 2020, pp.3044-3050. [PDF]

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Manuscripts

[i3] Ke Xue^#, Xi Lin^#, Yunqi Shi, Shixiong Kai, Siyuan Xu, and Chao Qian. Escaping Local Optima in Global Placement. In: Proceedings of the 61th ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference (DAC'24), San Francisco, CA, 2024. (Work-in-Progress poster) [Preprint]

[i2] Lei Song, Chenxiao Gao, Ke Xue, Chenyang Wu, Dong Li, Jianye Hao, Zongzhang Zhang, and Chao Qian. Reinforced In-Context Black-Box Optimization. arxiv, 2024. [Preprint]

[i1] Ren-Jian Wang^#, Ke Xue^#, Yutong Wang, Peng Yang, Haobo Fu, Qiang Fu, and Chao Qian. Diversity from Human Feedback. In: 2nd Agent Learning in Open-Endedness Workshop at NeurIPS'23, New Orleans, LA, 2023. [Preprint]

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Awards

2024 : 21st ACM SIGEVO Humies BRONZE Awards (with Yunqi Shi, Lei Song, and Chao Qian)

2023 : Huawei Spark Award (华为“揭榜挂帅”火花奖), "Multi-objective Black-box Optimization Technology for Ultra-High-Dimensional Spaces", Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. ;

2022 : Huawei Spark Award (华为“揭榜挂帅”火花奖), "Fast Multi-objective Optimization Strategies for Large-Scale Network Optimization with Complex Network Parameter Correlations", Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. ;

2021 : National Scholarship, Nanjing University ;

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Services

Conference PC Member:

ICML: 2022, 2023, 2024

NeurIPS: 2022, 2023, 2024

ICLR: 2024, 2025

AAAI: 2023, 2024, 2025

ECAI: 2023

AutoML: 2023

IEEE SSCI: 2022

CCML 2023

CCAI: 2022

Journal Reviewer :

SCIENCE CHINA Information Sciences

IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation

IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computational Intelligence

Swarm and Evolutionary Computation

Frontiers of Computer Science

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Teaching Assistant

Heuristic Search and Evolutionary Algorithms (For undergraduate and graduate students, 2020, 2021, 2022 )

Contact:
National Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology, Nanjing University, Xianlin Campus Mailbox 603, 163 Xianlin Avenue, Qixia District, Nanjing 210023, China
(南京市栖霞区仙林大道163号，南京大学仙林校区603信箱，软件新技术国家重点实验室，210023)

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